


Maybe and Maybe and Maybe Some More

by katybar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Established Relationship, Frustration, John is still a saint, Sherlock is not a git, demisexual!Sherlock, fantasies, talking is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1993212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katybar/pseuds/katybar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is an idiot about a lot of things, and that includes sex, and that used to not matter, not in the least, but now it does, and there is a reason, and that reason makes him tea and calls him brilliant and shares his flat.</p><p>And 57 minutes into their latest encounter, that reason is starting to get nervous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe and Maybe and Maybe Some More

The truth is, Sherlock is an idiot about some things.  He knows that, but he’s careful to limit being an idiot to things that don’t matter.  He’s an idiot about popular music and movie actresses (yes, all right, a few of the actors stick in his mind like gummy stains after you pull a poster off the wall, but they are more trouble to delete than they are to ignore) and television shows involving unreal living conditions.  He’s an idiot about a lot of things that make up the average Londoner’s life, but here’s the thing.  First, it doesn’t matter, because these things don’t matter, and second, well, there’s no second really, unless you count sheer pigheadedness, which Sherlock doesn’t.

Sherlock is an idiot about a lot of things, and that includes sex, and that used to not matter, not in the least, just because a few actors have left their gummy stains on the walls of his mind palace has no bearing on whether this matters at all, he’s not delusional, is he? And even if you told him that with his looks and his connections and his intelligence, he could have a go at it without being completely ridiculous, at some of those pretty boys at least, what would it matter?  Admiring someone’s face or the prowl in their walk or the drawl in their voice is not “one thing leads to another”, it doesn’t mean anything, go any farther, distract him for five seconds from a case or a sulk, or even keep him awake at night.

So yes, he is a sexual idiot, and it used to not matter, but now it does, and there is a reason, and that reason makes him tea and calls him brilliant and shares his flat.  

And right now that reason is starting to get nervous.  Sherlock can feel it, even though John’s mouth on him hasn’t changed, even though John’s breathing is still hoarse and his face (what Sherlock can see of it) is still flushed, even though there is no sliver of a tell, Sherlock can feel John’s sadness approaching, like mist in the evening, soft and cool.

An internal timecheck tells Sherlock that they’ve been doing this for 57 minutes now, and a quick visit to his database reminds him that, although pornographic writers are fond of extended encounters, here in the real world, an intermittent 57 minute blow job is bound to become anxiety-producing, not to mention uncomfortable, when the object of your attention nearly loses his erection for the third time.  

It had started promisingly, too.  Sherlock rarely asks and they rarely, in fact, do anything that most people would recognize as sex.  So when, for a surprise, the accidental brush of John’s hand against his thigh produces a brief thrill along his spine, and when, for a wonder, the pressure of his unmoving stockinged foot against the same thigh steadily ramps up Sherlock’s breathing _without John even noticing_ , Sherlock feels it would be -- what? wasteful? foodhardy? ungracious? -- to squander the chance.  All it takes is one long, freighted look, only a very slight widening of his eyes, but perhaps that’s where the problem started, because he was already shamming, wasn’t he, only just barely, but the adulteration remains like a stain.

He’s a bit angry too, because he wanted this, he really did, and that has never been a problem for him, not for years and years, and that is certainly down to John.  After years of treating his transport like a neglected stepchild, he has let John soften him, feed him tea and jammy dodgers, talk him into an occasional evening at a pub and sleeping more nights than not, and now this, this desire to have fingers furrowing along his scalp and fluting his stomach, and kisses pressed into the crease of his elbow, and broad licks along the jumping pulse at his throat, and that was fine, really, that was all fine, because John is nothing if not obliging, but this other desire, this constricting urge that all too easily turns frantic, this longing for explosion, this is not fine.  It is not fine because there is no easy translation between craving and acting, between yearning and enjoying. It is not fine because he is an idiot, he is the opposite of a conductor, he takes the simple warmth that John radiates so easily and twists it in on itself to a murky darkness.  And now he’s been doing it for a bit over 62 minutes now and every time he wants to stop, his damned transport acts up again with its insinuations of need and want and possibility.

He’s a bit angry at himself too, because he should have predicted this.  Prediction, as opposed to deduction, is a tricky science.  It succumbs to the lure of tiny changes in initial conditions, possible futures exponentially diverging, but having a wank just four days earlier was not exactly a butterfly meekly fluttering its wings in some distant rainforest, was it? -- more like a street mutt in the path of a fleeing thug.  What else could possibly result?

He hadn’t even needed the wank, not really.  So John was gone to a medical conference for three days.  Hell, John had been asleep, unconscious, or incommunicado _on another continent_ during some of their more important cases.  Sherlock didn’t even know what had set it off -- the smell of John’s soap in the shower?  A solitary teacup wandering in the sink? The familiar angle of his extra pair of trainers by the door?  Longing had pierced through him, and a parade of every girlfriend John had ever brought back to the flat tramping through his mind palace, plus two John had prided himself on concealing, and Sherlock’s feet had chosen their own path to the upstairs room.  Once there, he had sternly informed his recalcitrant transport that a few minutes lie-in on John’s bed, nose buried in John’s pillow, was quite enough thank you, and the next thing he knew, his flies were open and his hand was moving hypnotically in a way that his shrouded brain interpreted as necessary for the continuation of material reality.  It wasn’t pleasure, nothing even like.  But it was right, it was  obsession, escape, fulfillment, and completion. The stories informed him that some atavistic part of his brain should have been afraid for John’s early return, for John walking in to his own room to find Sherlock rocking himself into oblivion, deaf and dumb and blind until John reached in and pulled him out dripping by the heel.  But he wasn’t.  His limited brain had one fantasy, and that was John returning early, stepping into his room, inexplicably silent and knowing and naked, curling into bed, sheltering Sherlock’s exposed back with his own warm core, curving one arm around to Sherlock’s chest.  

That was it.  

That was the extent of a sexual fantasy that his brilliant, stunted brain could conjure.  

And that one, not even completed, gesture filled out the whole of his experience, left him shuddering and gasping and surprised by release.

That was the pitbull in the path of the fleeing thug, and it wouldn’t have taken much foresight to know how this story would end, but after 68 minutes, Sherlock is still trying to wrench it some other direction, and he is desperate for John to take over, why doesn’t John take over? Normally John is in control, because John knows -- he knows how to do this thing correctly, how to soothe, how to protect.  Maybe it’s because Sherlock initiated this time, maybe he doesn’t want to get in Sherlock’s way, maybe he wants Sherlock to start taking some responsibility, or maybe he’s just tired of being the one out in the lead all of the time. But Sherlock is sinking, he can feel the waves lapping into his ears and nose and throat.  It feels like dying.

“John,” he manages, his voice somewhere between a snarl and a whine.  

John releases his cock and takes a deep breath.  Mist condensing into a quiet rain.  He looks up at Sherlock and Sherlock knows what he’s going to say, he knows John will tell him it’s all right and everything is fine and whatever he wants or doesn’t want is fine, and he growls at the words still in John’s throat, because he needs them but he can’t tolerate hearing them, again, again, _always_ , again, again, again.  John shuts his mouth, his thin lips pressing against each other questioningly, and Sherlock hauls him up to bury his face in John shoulder.  The bad shoulder, he remembers as his forehead makes contact, wonders if he can absorb pain and what John’s pain regurgitated would feel like.

“Can I try something?” John says in a low voice to the top of his skull, his words vibrating in Sherlock’s curls.  Sherlock doesn’t answer, but his relief at not hearing those words again loosens his neck and his head lolls a little on John’s chest.  John takes this as permission, must do, since now he is gently pushing Sherlock face down onto the mattress, hands swaddled under his chest, cock still more hard than soft trapped beneath him.  Sherlock hisses in surprise as John clambers on top of him, his broad chest enclosing Sherlock’s back, arms nestling Sherlock’s head, legs framing Sherlock’s own down to his calves, and it might be the breath slowly leaking from his body, or the heat of John’s face against his neck, or the cradle of John’s hips, but Sherlock finds that the tilting swirling disintegrating world is slowing.  The waves lapping at his face, choking his nostrils and roiling in his throat, have receded, he is floating, bobbing, softening, bouyed by the liquid heat of John’s muscles and breath.  He wants to test John’s limits by flailing a bit, but the angle is awkward and his arms don’t seem prepared to go along with the plan.  His lungs flatten and his heart slows and his thoughts caramelize.  His mind glides along the curves of their bodies (quadratics, catenaries, slowing to asymptotes, flattening derivatives) as they distort each other.  

He doesn’t know how long he lays under John (yes he does, of course he does, it’s been 89 minutes since this whole thing started, but he wishes he didn’t know, which is more to the point) when his gliding mind encounters John’s still hard cock.  It lies slightly off-kilter to the left of his spine, digging unapologetically into the small of his back.  It feels … nice, actually.  Kind of comforting.  Without thinking too hard, Sherlock rocks against it, and it’s like a one-fingered massage. It makes him smile. He rocks again, then freezes as he feels, rather than hears, the groan that John has swallowed, reverberating against his ribs.  Shit.

Long moments of silence stalemate them.

“You should really do something about that,” Sherlock assays, going for flat, with just an edge of rueful and self-deprecating, but his voice slips and it comes out impossibly sultry.

“I _am_ doing something,” John answers, and Sherlock blinks, surprised.  It’s been years, and he thought he knew all of John’s pillow talk, the mixture of randy and crude and psychobabbling and affectionate and profane that John wields like precision weaponry, but he was wrong.  He expected fond reassurance, and he got unruffled instead.   So unruffled that Sherlock rocks back again, and then to the side a few times, because this is nothing like sex but damn if the small of his back knows that -- it is pleased and warm and glowy in a way that Sherlock normally associates with erectile tissue, and he snorts at the ridiculousness, but doesn’t stop this new reverse rutting.

“No really,” Sherlock begins again, “you should do something about that.” Now that he actually wants sultry, his voice flatlines, of course.  

“Really?” queries John, and his powerful legs squeeze Sherlock tighter, stilling the rocking.

Sherlock gives up on his voice and just nods, soft enough for John to feel without getting smacked in the nose for his trouble.

“All right then,” John murmurs, almost too quietly for Sherlock to hear.  He releases Sherlock’s legs and shifts over the topography of Sherlock’s lower back for a few minutes, and Sherlock rocks back against him to the extent that his almost numb body will allow.

“John -- “ Sherlock starts again.  It’s never easy for him to say words out loud when their bodies are moving together, no matter how many sentences, paragraphs, hell, whole thesauri of words, are careening around in his head.

“Sherlock -- “ John is not mimicking him, not really, just waiting him out.

“I want. Let me... you…” This is hopeless.  Sherlock is never without words.  Never. The words are right there in his mind now, in his throat, on his tongue, leaping valiantly to their deaths, imploding upon contact with the acoustical world.   _I want you to groan and sigh_ ,  and _Let me hear you. The louder the better_ , and _Reassure me_.

Luckily for Sherlock, John is not a sexual genius for nothing.  He’s pieced together, over the years, some of what can work for Sherlock.  He moans experimentally, a humming growling in his throat, and a flash of heat sears Sherlock from chest to knees.  Surely John felt it, because he groans again, grinding his cock down just above the swell of Sherlock’s arse. It’s brilliant, and before he can censor himself, Sherlock mewls a bit in encouragement.  Well, at least it wasn’t a whimper.  Whimpering is humiliating, even if he sometimes longs for that, but mewling is, well, just encouraging, just communication.  Just to let John know he’s on the right track.

John moans open-mouthed again into the back of his neck and pushes his cock a little higher along Sherlock’s spine, sending waves of happiness pulsing bouncing colliding up and down the column.  Sherlock mewls again and reconsiders the merits of whimpering.  He _wants_ this, he wants John’s cock digging into his back, scratching at his vertebrae, bruising his kidneys, and who the hell gets off on that?  

“Sherlock?” John is panting now, and it clips his syllables.  “You want this fast? Or slow?” he pauses to catch his breath, then blurts out between thrusts, “cuz I’m good with fast right now.”

A moment of careful concentration is needed for Sherlock to form the consonants, but he manages the first three letters in “fast” before trailing off in a definite whimper, and he hears John huff a pleased laugh behind him before he refocuses, committed to ‘fast’ now.  His cock still roams Sherlock’s back, his hips stutter in Morse, and he keeps up a steady groan sigh moan, and Sherlock tracks the sound, the movement, the coded thrusts, they are words and maps and doorways to him, and his other words fall away, he responds only in writhes and whimpers because those tell John everything, give away every secret, lay his heart bare to John, who shouts as he comes, gloriously messy, all over Sherlock’s back.

It’s been 97 minutes and John is draped over Sherlock like a revelation, and Sherlock can’t breath any more.

“You’re heavy,” he grunts, poking at John with his arse, since it is the only part of his body free for poking.

“Mmm,” John agrees, apparently content to lay there until they fuse together.

Sherlock rolls to one side, tipping John off of him, and holds his breath as pins and needles shoot through his squashed arms.  Once they subside, he rolls carefully to face John’s back, reaching one arm around John.

John curls into him, kisses his palm, then his knuckles, then murmurs “are you--”

“It’s all fine,” Sherlock cuts him off, but gently.

John cranes his head around to look up at him, eyes serious but mouth quirking.  “I’m pretty sure that’s my line,” he says.

“Not all the time,” says Sherlock.  “You don’t get to have it all the time,” he repeats doggedly.

“All right,” John concedes graciously.

“In any case, this is part of the … of what I…” For god’s sakes, it’s happening again, and they’re not even moving.

“This?” John kisses the backs of his fingers again.

“Yes,” hisses Sherlock.

“Is part of what?”

“What I …”  Sherlock closes his eyes, willing himself to squeeze the word out, willing John to understand without syntax or elaboration. “Imagined,” he finishes softly.

John digests that, then adds, in a quietly neutral voice, “fantasized?”

Sherlock jerks as if he’s been slapped, but John is still talking.  “Tell me what you fantasized,” John demands. “Please?” This is not John’s kind, careful, nurturing, healing voice -- no, this voice is raw and hungry and pleading, and Sherlock wishes he had more to tell, more than what he says, which is “I imagined you walking in on me…” he flounders but continues without the word, “and laying down like this with your arm … like this…” and grinds to a halt, embarrassed at this simpleminded paucity that cannot even properly be called a fantasy, but John presses Sherlock’s hand to his chest, and Sherlock can feel the wave of heat there as surely as if he was watching the man blush, and then John moves Sherlock’s other hand to his face, and Sherlock can feel it glowing.  Is that something John could counterfeit?  Sherlock doubts it, and that mollifies him.

It’s been years, and Sherlock is still an idiot, hell, he lowers the sexual quotient of the whole street, but he’s trying.  If John can learn to check tanlines and scratch depths, Sherlock can learn this alphabet of fantasy and touch and desire, at least well enough to reflect light, if not to produce it.  John is warm and happy in his arms, and Sherlock won’t hold any of it against him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a Paul Simon song. It has nothing to do with the story, but I figure that's how sex would feel to Sherlock.


End file.
